An Atomic Romance

by Bobbie Ann Mason

  He was reading the editorials when a phrase on the radio news skipped across his consciousness like a pebble on a pond. A headline, innocuous sounding, not elaborated upon, swiftly abandoned for another sensation—a carjacking. He rewound mentally what he had just heard: the administration had announced the start-up of the Strategic Nuclear Armaments Preparedness Program (SNAPP). Ten nuclear facilities were candidates for the new contracts. Reed spilled cereal on the floor. He was barefoot. He stepped in soggy cornflakes. He flung the dish into the sink, but it didn’t break.

  Nuclear bombs. More nuclear bombs—small ones probably. Suitcase bombs. Baby bombs, what they used to call kitten bombs. Bunker-busters—now named “robust earth penetration mechanisms.” Deadly, precise things that could tunnel into rock and sink their hideous light into the dark earth. Baby mushroom clouds. Fast, thick streaks of light. Muffled clouds mushrooming through cracks in rock like easy, silent gas blasts.

  Surely he had misheard. Yet he wasn’t really surprised. He felt as if a blast of wind had blown a hole through him.

  He found nothing about the new plan in the newspaper. On the Internet he located the brief wire-service story. Ten sites were being considered for various phases of bomb processing—including plutonium-pit refurbishment and uranium enrichment. Reed doubted that Congress would stand in the way. The ten sites were not named, but what it meant for the plant Reed could guess: with special centrifuge technology, the fuel could probably be cycled repeatedly until it was enriched to 90 percent—bomb grade. He figured the plant could switch from commercial to military in a sleight-of-hand maneuver, just as a rogue country could slip into bomb making while ostensibly creating electricity for heating up hot-tubs.

  Reed telephoned Teddy, who would be getting home from his shift about then, but there was no answer. He tried Jim, paging him on the operations floor. Jim hadn’t gone home yet.

  “This is happening a whole lot sooner than we thought,” Jim said.

  “Of course we’re one of the ten places,” Reed said. “They’re going to need our fuel for their new toys.”

  “We don’t know the details, but I’m sure everything will be speeded up now. I knew this was going to happen! You can count on it, Reed. No layoffs. We’ll get that centrifuge for sure. We’ll see how fast this plant cranks up. I bet the D.O.E. will be here by lunchtime.”

  “Atoms for Peace!” Reed said, like a sign-off, but he thought Jim lived in an irony-free zone.

  The accelerated cleanup would be even more accelerated now, he realized. The universe was accelerating. Everything was flying faster and faster, farther apart.

  Reed replenished Clarence’s water, pleased that he had the presence of mind to do so. He did not try to call Julia. He felt a slight vertigo, as if the news had made his surroundings wobble. He hadn’t finished his breakfast, but he had no more appetite. He set the dishes in the sink and filled them with water.

  He found his mother asleep—lying across her bed, her shoes still on. He tiptoed around the bed and stared at her until she woke up. “What are you staring at?” she asked.

  “I got here quick as I could.”

  “I gave up on you.” She straightened up and sat on the side of the bed. She seemed agile, her leg stronger.

  He helped her to her chair and eased into the sofa. His stomach was still a bit queasy, and his mind seemed to be floating inside his head.

  “I can do without these nosy-rosies that work here,” she said. “And without their hard-luck cuisine. And without these half-brained people who live here. I’m not one of them. I want to go home.”

  “If you recall, the Smithfields are living in your house. They bought it. They play volleyball and raise chickens.”

  “That’s so hard to believe,” she said. “Sometimes I forget.” She fumbled with some letters and cards stacked on her coffee table. “They’re going to drive me nuts here,” she said. “Norrie Paramor! They’re always playing Norrie Paramor’s orchestra on the intercom. It never stops. I’d love to hear Fats Waller do ‘Flat Foot Floogie With the Floy Floy.’ Or anything by Spike Jones. These people have no sense of fun here. They just play paper dolls.”

  Reed stared at the quilt hanging on the wall by the dining table. It was his grandmother Reed’s old pinwheel quilt, its reeling design like drunken galaxies. He shifted his focal point to the bird clock on the wall and felt steadier. It was ten to eight. He wondered which bird would sing. The song sparrow’s picture was at eight.

  A couple of the cards in his mother’s lap fell to the floor. Reed picked them up, a get-well card from someone in Memphis and a card from Shirley.

  “Shirley’s coming in October,” his mother said, taking the cards.

  “Great. She can be more help to you than I’ve been. It’s about time she showed up.”

  Laying the cards on the coffee table, she said, “I’ve been thinking about all that stuff they’ve found out at the plant.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You thought I was in never-never land and didn’t have a brain in my head. You’re just pretending everything’s hunky-dory, but I know better.”

  “But I didn’t want to worry you.”

  “Well, I am worried. I’m afraid of what that plant has done to you.”

  “You know I’m always careful.” He was the voice of reason, clutching at birdsong.

  She was silent, wadding a tissue in her hand. Then, haltingly, she said, “They’ll never get that mess cleaned up.”

  He took her hand and held it. He glanced at the photograph of his father on the shelf near the TV. He seemed to have shifted slightly, his face a bit more inquisitive.

  “Tell me what Dad’s accident was like—and what it did to you,” Reed said, putting his arm around her shoulders and giving her a little squeeze. “You never said much.”

  Reed wasn’t in the habit of referring to his father as Dad; for a moment, it was almost as if his father had a life there with them.

  Trembling slightly, she turned her face away from him. Reed held her tight until she got over her tears.

  “You don’t have to talk about it, Ma. I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, it was bad, real bad. In the hospital he was raw and blistered. All over.” She paused and touched her forehead, summoning memory.

  “You don’t have to tell me.”

  She shook her head. “He cried,” she said. “It hurt so bad. He cried to die. He couldn’t even talk to me for the pain. He couldn’t form words. And they couldn’t give him enough morphine to kill the pain. It went on for six hours.” She blew her nose. “By the time you went to work there, they stopped mixing the chemicals the way they did, so I thought it was safe. You wouldn’t have an accident like that. And the money was so good. And you were just starting out in life. If I had known. . . .”

  “Don’t worry about me. I’m O.K.”

  She clasped his hand. Talking to the bookshelf, she said, “Now I think I was just closing my eyes. Everybody was so loyal; nobody dared to say anything bad about the plant. Your father never knew how bad that stuff was.”

  “I’m sorry I brought this up.”

  “I couldn’t blame the plant for what they did to him. We were in a war, you know. You couldn’t question.”

  “That’s the trouble, isn’t it? Things seem different now.”

  “If you get cancer I think it will purely kill me.”

  “No, no, Ma, I’m fine. I feel just dandy. My urine’s clear and I can run uphill. And I’m still as careful as ever.” He grinned. “With chemicals and with women.”

  “I guess I’ll stay here and I won’t move back home,” she said. “I know I’m a burden to you.”

  “That doesn’t sound like you, Mom. Where’s your spunk? This morning you were wanting me to come and haul you out of here. Don’t play martyr on me.”

  “Where’s the girl who went with us to Captain Mack’s?”

  “She’s gone to Chicago to see her sister. But I’m going up there to get her and bring her bac
k. I can’t wait to see her so I can give her a big smack on the puss.” He kissed his mother’s cheek. “I love her almost as much as I do you, Mom.”

  His mom laughed. “She’s good. She’s good for you.”

  The clock warbled the hour. It was the goldfinch.

  “Damn. I have to fix that thing,” Reed said, rising and seizing the clock from the wall.

  “They still get mixed up,” she said.

  He worked on it, twirling the knob in the back. “You have to cycle through the songs and stop one bird shy of the one you want to sing next. That would be the cardinal at nine o’clock.” He finished resetting the birds and replaced the clock on the wall. He didn’t know why it had taken him so long to get around to accomplishing this simple task. It was one more story of his life.

  His mother’s love gushing over him, he was ready to rip boldly into the fabric of space-time. On his way down the hall, he tipped his cap and greeted a woman pushing a walker—Mrs. Valley! Lindbergh’s pal. Preoccupied with the arduousness of her journey, she didn’t speak. But the man who said prayers at meals gave him a military salute, and one of the ladies in the sunroom waved and said, “Tootle-oo!” He realized that Norrie Paramor’s orchestra was playing on the intercom as he strode down the hall to the exit.

  40

  Reed filled out forms for the health screening at the walk-in clinic.

  “Make a fist for me, dear,” said a lab tech in a flower-print smock. “Good. Now you’re going to feel a stick.”

  The tiny woman seemed to be a trainee, but she appeared to be as old as his mother. A nurse in a blue cardigan helped to guide her hand, but the stick into Reed’s vein went awry.

  “A rolling vein,” the nurse said. “Back it up a little.”

  Reed wondered if senior citizens were infiltrating the medical establishment in order to monitor its abuses. She poked him again. Even though it hurt, Reed stayed silent. The nurse said, “Here, Miss Bonnie, follow my hand. Back it up a little.” The old woman seemed frightened. Her rubber gloves were loose. The nurse hovered as the geriatric lab tech drew several tubes of blood. The tubes in the tray tinkled like a distant shattering of glass.

  “You’re getting the works,” the nurse said to Reed.

  “I’ve already had the works.”

  He got the breathing tests and the chest X-ray; he gave a urine specimen; he scheduled a colonoscopy for one week hence. A physician’s assistant examined his prostate. She was unattractive, with frizzy hair and a thick waist. His prostate felt healthy as a peach, she said.

  “Did I leave out anything?” he asked. He was covered, ass to elbow.

  He drove straight to the cytopathology lab where Julia worked. It was on the third floor in the rear of a nondescript medical building near the Interstate. He ran up the stairway instead of waiting for the elevator. Passing through the hallway of bulletin boards covered with research posters on ticks and viruses, Reed entered the outer office of the lab. There Reed asked the technician on duty if he could speak with Julia Jensen. A personal matter. Urgent, he added.

  “I think she’s still out of town.”

  “Can I find out how to get in touch with her?”

  “I’ll ask Sandra. She may be able to help you.”

  Sandra appeared, a short-haired woman in glasses. “She went off in a hurry, after her exams were over. She took a course in microbiology, and she’d been talking about going to the University of Chicago.” The woman squinted, sizing up Reed. “I think she may have gone up there to see about registering.”

  “It’s molecular, not micro,” Reed said. “Wasn’t she supposed to be back at work by now? Haven’t you heard from her?”

  “We expected her back last week, but I believe she called and asked for an extension.”

  “So you’ve heard from her? Is she quitting her job?”

  “I didn’t speak to her myself, and I’m not sure what her plans are.”

  “Do you know how I can get in touch with her?” Reed jingled change in his pocket.

  “I have no idea. Sorry!”

  “Could I leave her a message?”

  “Well, if she calls I could give her a message. Just write down your name and number.” She handed him a notepad bearing a drug ad logo at the top.

  “Tell Julia I love her,” he sang. Did he really sing that? he wondered later, after he had written down the information and left it with Sandra, who tucked the notepaper in the pocket of her strangely cerulean lab pants.

  In the vacant lot, the grass was drying to brown. The sky was clear and blue, with no hint of rain. Clarence was fetching a squirrel toy, his favorite.

  “I’m going to Chicago,” Reed said to Clarence, who cocked his head and listened. “Burl’s going to look in on you at the kennel and make sure they’re treating you right. And when I bring Julia back, we’ll all go camp out at the lake and watch the meteor showers.”

  Clarence seized his squirrel toy and began gnawing on it.

  “I’m going to Chicago, Clarence,” Reed said, easing the squirrel from the dog’s mouth. “Forget Atomic Man. Just call me Captain Plutonium.”

  He threw the squirrel and Clarence ran for it.

  Reed rescheduled his shift so that he didn’t have to come in until Friday night. Then he called Julia’s machine and told it, “O.K., Miss Julia Jensen. It’s me again, one last time before I haul my ass off to the Windy City and come looking for you. I know you’re secretly checking your messages. Here’s my message: I want you to meet me at that sculpture at the University of Chicago. I’ll be hanging around there tomorrow, Tuesday, between one and four in the afternoon. I’ve got a bone to pick with Enrico Fermi. You be there then and we’ll have a nuclear exchange. You and I together can decide the fate of civilization.” He paused, then blurted, “And by the way, I want to see you because I love you.”

  41

  Reed stuffed his good duffel, e-mailed Dalton and Dana, said good-bye to Clarence at the kennel, and tanked up his truck. Riding in the truck was jarring, like driving over speed strips, but his car needed some transmission work. As he headed out of town, he nostalgically recalled the night last summer when he and Julia went in the truck to the cartoon festival at the drive-in movies, like some country couple out on a date after hauling hay on a long June afternoon.

  Anonymous on the Interstate, he felt the warm rising of desire for her. He had so much to tell her: the plutonium in the deer, the science-fiction experiments, the night at Fort Wolf, the Celtic warrior, the church pageant. He could leave out Hot Mama. Julia had told him he was being dishonest with her, holding things back. That was true. But he would tell her everything now. She would be glad that he got the physical. His breathing tests were damn good, he thought. She would probably go critical over the plans for renewed bomb production. We’re in this together, he would say to her.

  Once again Reed was hitting the road, letting loose. The astronaut Michael Collins once said that the point wasn’t to go to the moon but to leave the earth. Reed thought that was an easy rationalization for Collins, who must have been disappointed that he didn’t get to walk on the moon with Armstrong and Aldrin. For as long as Reed could remember, he had been leaving, but never really going anywhere, except in his imaginary Reedmobile. Today, though, he wasn’t an intergalactic tourist. He had an earthly mission. He was going to bring Julia back home. He couldn’t believe she would enroll in the University of Chicago without telling him. The lab gals must have been mistaken.

  He held his breath and swept downhill past the silver anonymous box of an eighteen-wheeler. It could be carrying shipments of shoes. Or toxic sludge bound for Yucca Mountain—to wait in line until Yucca Mountain was approved as the national nuclear-waste dump. Maybe someday it would qualify for the National Register of Historic Places—with a plaque, he thought, so that no one would forget what was there. His mind wandered away then, and melodies surfaced. He wished he could make up a song for Julia. When he was a boy, he formed the idea that men always knelt and sang wh
en proposing. A song could be direct, yet general, without sloppy barbs of reality. A song would go straight to the heart—making love or staying alive or getting by or shuffling off to Buffalo. If he could write songs, he would write about longing, like gases oozing out of the mud of his heart. Better still, he’d write a song about working, to say what he wanted to say to her in a form that embodied feeling more than talking did, with all its evasion and embroidery. A man’s work gave him identity, meaning, structure, a fucking raison d’être! He tried to think of some Delta work chants. Tote that barge. How did you tote a barge? Tow? He thought of his grandfather working on the levee, in mud and baking sun. His father heaving greensalt with his bare hands. Surely there was a personal song in all that.

  It seemed impossible to think of an original melody. He tried a few lines, but each line he could think of went to the tune of “Eve of Destruction.”

  Come on, baby,

  We’re the Atom and Eve of destruction.

  He envisioned Julia’s mind cruising blithely through the intricate pathways of molecular biology. What would she want with a cell rat? He was only a maintenance engineer; however complex and highly paid his job was, he still was a fix-it specialist, while she was exploring the unknown. It was like the difference between a fry cook and a chef. He remembered eating meat loaf in front of her during their first meeting. But he had made her laugh.

  His mind boiled as he rolled down the road. Actually, he was still angry with her. She had wounded him. She was rude in not answering his calls. And she was so absorbed with viruses and her large plans that she wasn’t considering him. But his desire for her wasn’t just a gonadal flare-up. She was different, just different from all the other women he had known. He would be angrier if he weren’t so worried. She had told him so little about her sister’s troubles that Reed was free to imagine them. He entertained several scenarios dealing with drugs, guns, hospitals, jails. Something must have happened to Julia. He tried to remind himself that it wasn’t her habit to call.